Stefana Pop-Curseu is the artistic director of the National Theatre in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She visited the festival and tells Jacqueline Dobreva about her impressions of the performances.

Now is a good moment to share something with you because I really liked the performance I saw tonight – “Silk”. I’ve been here only for 3 days but this evening I felt that theatre can still do a lot for our emotions and for the way we replay our past; it can do a lot for our ideals, for what we love and what we have lost. And I am really happy at this moment. I really think that theatre still has this mission that sometimes is unfortunately forgotten by contemporary people.

I have seen other interesting productions at the festival. For example, I also liked the dance performance I saw yesterday,“Freefall”, despite the small technical problems. It was full of poetry and energy. The dancers were extremely inside of what they were doing. Both performances were filled with beautiful scenery. They had great vision.

I saw other great shows before, but they weren’t that much interested in aesthetics. Many of them focus more on social and political issues. Of course, these are extremely important nowadays, but if we forget about the beautiful part of life, we lose a large part of the meaning of life. I think that in order to make the world a better place to live in, we must believe in beauty. We must learn that there is a balance between beauty and ugliness. Performances like  “Silk” show this and I am very happy that I was able to watch it.

There are many aspects I could talk about this performance – the scenography, the costumes, the actors… Everything was so intense and with such an organic flow. The novel was also very well dramatized. It could have been too long, too boring but it has not.

As a theatre critic, teacher and artistic director I do not only want to listen to the text and follow  the story. I need to see it and this is what the director has to do. The director has to give an image and to catch you as a spectator. The team of “Silk” succeeded at this. I really want to congratulate all of them. I think this performance was the cherry of the cake in the festival programme.

I am really happy to be here in Varna and I regret that I am leaving tomorrow. The atmosphere was very nice and people were very well-intentioned. I think I’ll come again and I also hope that maybe the directors of the festival will come to our festival in Cluj.